Swedish author and famous pro-Ukraine blogger Lars Wilderäng (Cornucopia) reports today that the Swedish security expert Karl Emil Nikka has revealed that Kagi is using the Kremlin propaganda tool Yandex as a backend for searches.
Wilderäng speculates this might mean search terms are leaking to Russia, while others worry about how Kremlin thus can get their talking points into western search results.
Security expert Karl Emil Nikka tells us that the search engine Kagi, popular among tech geeks, uses Russian Yandex, which was introduced after the full-scale invasion. This, of course, gives Russia the opportunity to look at what is searched for via Kagi.
Link (in Swedish), see 11:22 update: https://cornucopia.se/2024/10/uppdateras-ryssland-medger-bruk-av-c-stridsmedel-mot-ukraina-rysk-pilot-som-mordade-68-ukrainare-ihjalslagen-med-hammare-bland-de-allra-storsta-ryska-forlusterna-under-kriget-igar/
oof
And I was just thinking about getting a subscription.
Time to selfhost SearXNG instead.
SearXNG also supports Yandex as one of the many search-engine backend.
[feat] engine: implementation of yandex (web, images) #3733
Can’t you just not enable the Yandex backend if you’re selfhosting searx?
You can disable any backend on SearXNG, Stract, 4get or some other self-hosted FOSS alternative. However, for Kagi, there’s this feature called lenses, which probably works in the same way as Stract’s Optics - not sure if it allows blocking of a particular search-engine service.
Gotcha, that sounds like searx is a good option then. At first I thought you were giving a reason why searx isn’t a suitable alternative as the gp comment is downvoted a bunch.
Note that Yandex has an aggressive captcha, so it doesn’t really work with SearXNG in its current state. Tested a couple weeks ago.